It is exactly one month since one of the most wanted Genocide fugitives, Ladislas Ntaganzwa, was arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after more than 20 years on the run. Ntaganzwa is one of the eight suspects that the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) which succeeded the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), had referred to Rwanda for trial. Two of them; Bernard Munyagishari and Jean Bosco Uwinkindi, have already been transferred to Rwanda. There is no logical explanation for the delay because Ntaganzwa’s case does not have to go through a lengthy extradition process but should be transferred immediately to Rwanda as ruled by the ICTR before it wound up at the end of last year. Some schools of thought point out to two possibilities for the dilly dallying; with Ntaganzwa having a US$ five million bounty on his head offered by the US government, those holding the suspect first want to cash in before they hand him over. Another possibility is the DRC government is holding him as a bargaining chip for some demands from Rwandan authorities. He is more or less a political pawn on a complicated chessboard. Whatever the case may be, the DRC authorities have the obligation to comply with the ruling by an international tribunal. It is understandable that five million dollars is a great temptation, neither should they obstruct justice for the sake of scoring political brownie points. Justice, above all, should be upheld because the over one million innocent souls lost in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi is no mean figure either.
